The Jew in Germany Today

(This is the second of four articles on the Jews in Germany by the Brilliant British journalist, F. A. Voight, for many years Berlin correspodent of teh Manchester Guardian, leading liberal newspaper. Mr. Voight had to leave Germany following his disclosures of Nazi complicity in the Reichstate fire and is now stationed in Paris where be survey the German scene for bis newspaper.)

There can be no complete record of the innumerable acts of violence perpetrated against the Jews under the Hitler dictatorship The body of unrefuted evidence that is available is enormous-even if it represented all that had happened the presecution would be one of the most frightful of modern times. But ti represents only a small fraction of the whole. We have not, and problably never shall have, more than a fragmentary knowledge of the beatings, the murders, the tortures,the robbing, the blackmailing, the arrestrs, the imprison ments, not to speak of the humiliations (both public and private) that have been perpetrated by Nazis on the Jews. No systematic inquiry is possible, for a cictim of persecution who gives evidence is not only punishable under German law (the evidence being termed “gruelpropaganda,”) usually translated as “atrocity mongering”) but may be arrested without a warrant and may, without trial, be sent to a “Brownhouse” for a beating, or to a concentration camp (a far greaster hardship than ordinary imprisonment).

VARIES IN DISTINETION

The persecution also varies in severity from district to district. There are Jew-who may be quite open-minded and intelligent-who, although residing in Germany, honestly maintain that “things are not so bad.” The reason is that in their own district there may be little active persecution, and, as hardly anything appears in the German press, the truth may not have come to their knowledge. In a town like Treves, for example, the cruder excesses have been avoided, although anti-Semitic legislation is operating there as elsewhere. In Baden the persecution of the Jews as well as of the political opponents of the regime has been relatively mild. In Berlin it has been frightful-in the carly days of the persecution hundreds of Jews (and not only German Jews) were physically maltreated. A full account of what happened in Berline alone would fill several volumes, and it would make such reading as to cause the utmost wonder as to how such dreadful things are possible in teh mdern world. But Berlin is not the worst-it prbably represents a fair average of what has happended to the Jews in Germany. In Hessen the anti-Semitic excesses went on month after month, os that hundreds of Jewish families were com;elled to seek refuge in the frorests or to leave for other parts. The emigration of the Jews abroad is only part of the total emigration, many having fled form regions of severe persecution less severe (in Berlin, for esample, there are many fugitives from Hessen, Silesia and elsewhere). The cities of Worms, Brunswick and Cassel also hav ean appaling record. In Breslau, the chief Silesian city, and in some of the outlying townships and in some parts of Saxony the parsecution has been ferocious. Several townships have expelled their entire Jewish population. The Jews of Neidenburg, in East Prussia, for example, were ordered to leaved by the end of 1933.

Many Jews have been the victims of double persecution-that is to say, they have been persecuted both as Jews and as political opponents of the Hitler dictatorship. In the concentration camps-which probably hold about 50,000 prisoners-Jews are often selected for special maltreatment. Thus at Dachau the more repulsive camp duties are assigned to Jews. Several Jews have been nurdered at Dachau. One of them was Dr. Spiegel, who became known to the world at large (though not by name through not by name) through a photograph that was published in many English and American newspapers and periodicals showing how he was paraded through the streets of Munich, without whoes, his trousers cut short at the knees, and a placard hanging around his neck with the words “I shall never more complain to the police about the Nazis.” In the concetration camp at Brandenburg Jewish prisoners get no proper ration, but are made to cat the leavings from the meals of the other prisoners from one bowl and without knives or forks. In almost all the concertration indignities.

There can be lttle doubt that the peculiary malignant character of the persecution of the Jews in Nuremburg, a persecution which is contunually being rivived, is connected with the incessant agitation of the Stuermer, a weekly that specializes in anti-Semitism. It is edited by the Nazi leader julius Streiche, who was in charge of the anti-Semitic boycott on April 1. The Stuermer not only incites to ever-renewed persecution but it continually publishes the names of individual Jews, with their addresses, as suitable for victimization. One of its special it publises the names of Gentile girls who have associated with Jews (whose rames are often published as well), demanding that they shall be boycotted by all, thus exposing them to public execration and possibly to violence and economic ruin. The Stuermer shows no sign to date of abandoning its campaign.

HITLER AT TOP

Teh persecution has organized from top to bottom. Its chief originator and inspirer is, of course, the German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, and then the professional and academic classes. The students, to some extent the smaller shopkeepers, and, of course, the disciplined Brown Shirts, follow.

Among the worst persecutors are doctors, dentists and other professional men who want the jobs of their Jewish colleagues, and conceal their desiers under the enthusiasm for the Nazi cause that makes such a favorable impression of youthful fervor and idealims on visitors to Germany. Jewish professional men are continually being denounced as “Marxists” (even when they have had nothing to do with politics) to the Bronw Shirt or to the secret state police (now the chief terrorist organization in Germany) by envious Gerntile colleagues. The German professional journals-the Deutscher Apotheker and the Berline Aerzte Korrespondenz, for example-continue to incite to renewed persecution is the work of educted Germany. Uneducated persos have, no dougt, been instruments of the persecutors, but uneducated Germany as a whole has had no part in it.